Many small research laboratories would benefit from the use of a small computer system to monitor their test procedures, handle their test result reporting, provide diagnostic decision support, maintain their data for later research purposes, and perform administrative support and billing functions. We have developed a laboratory information system which is currently being used by two state screening laboratories. This system could be modified to meet the needs of small research laboratories in an economical fashion; the system runs on a personal computer and will support multiple simultaneous users. Such modification would involve generalizing the system so that the user could suit it to his or her laboratory. A major problem small research laboratories have in obtaining software is that it must be customized to their needs; this software would be user configurable to avoid the cost of creating custom software. Phase I would involve examining the needs of a "learning" set of small research laboratories, determining their common requirements, and designing the modifications to generalize our existing software to meet these needs. The software design would then be compared with a set of "test" laboratories to determine whether the proposed design is adequate to meet their needs. Phase II would involve implementing the required modifications, testing the software in a variety of small laboratories, and making any further modifications required. Extensive user documentation would be produced so that the user could configure the final system without expert help.